February 12, 2013

Rethinking Our Addictions

Each year, I wait about 10 days after the Super Bowl and then I go back and look at the spots.

The event is still fresh but the hysteria is gone. It gives me a little perspective on what marketers did and what I can glean from it.

Advertising always tends to reflect trends in the larger culture. That's a nice way of saying we steal shamelessly from whatever is popular. Sometimes the stealing is overt. Sometimes it is cleverly disguised. Sometimes we don't steal the actual ideas, just the styles and the structures.

This year, the advertising was unusually evocative of popular culture -- the comic book aesthetics of the movies; the trashy morality of "reality" TV; and the horror of pop music.

The advertising was beautifully executed but mostly vapid -- all muscle, no brains.

A few spots stood out -- Budweiser's "Clydesdale"; Ram's "God Made A Farmer"; and VW's "Get Happy."

We can argue all day about whether we liked the spots, and we can argue over their creative value and political meaning, but regardless of our professional opinions, there is no doubt that these spots struck a chord with viewers.

The interesting thing is that they may have stood out because they eschewed the thrash-pop sensibility. They were gentle, innocent, and positive. They were not evocative of pop culture in their style and structure.

Perhaps there is a lesson in this. Maybe we need to rethink our addiction to pop aesthetics in advertising. Maybe in the 21st century we like our culture trashy, but our ads innocent.

I don't think the godaddy spot was "bad." I didn't like it, but I'm trying more and more to figure out how to qualify "good" and "bad." If godaddy sells a shitload more domain names because of it...

Here's an idea for next year. Set up a contest. Everyone who buys a domain name is entered for a chance to star in next year's Super Bowl ad with (hot supermodel guy or girl depending on gender of winner). Shit, I might buy one myself. The partnership opportunities alone become hilarious. Scope? Trident? Southwest Airlines (wanna get away?).

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Ad Contrarian Says:

"Creative people make the ads. Everyone else makes the arrangements."

"Delusional thinking isn't just acceptable in marketing today -- it's mandatory.""Good ads appeal to us as consumers. Great ads appeal to us as humans."

"Social Media: Tens of millions of disagreeable people looking to make trouble."

"As an ad medium, the web is a much better yellow pages and a much worse television."

"Sometimes success in the advertising business is about sitting quietly and letting clients proceed with their hysterical delusions."

"Marketers prefer precise answers that are wrong to imprecise answers that are right."

"Brand studies last for months, cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, and generally have less impact on business than cleaning the drapes."

"The idea that the same consumer who was frantically clicking her TV remote to escape from advertising was going to merrily click her mouse to interact with it is going to go down as one of the great advertising delusions of all time."

"Nobody really knows what "creativity" is. Every year thousands of people take a pilgrimage to find out. This involves flying to Cannes, snorting cocaine, and having sex with smokers."

"Marketers habitually overestimate the attraction of new things and underestimate the power of traditional consumer behavior."

"We don’t get them to try our product by convincing them to love our brand. We get them to love our brand by convincing them to try our product."

"In American business, there is nothing stupider than the previous generation of management."

"If the message is right, who cares what screen people see it on? If the message is wrong, what difference does it make?"

"The only form of product information on the planet less trustworthy than advertising is the shrill ravings of web maniacs."

"There's no bigger sucker than a gullible marketer convinced he's missing a trend."

"All ad campaigns are branding campaigns. Whether you intend it to be a branding campaign is irrelevant. It will create an impression of your brand regardless of your intent."

"Nobody ever got famous predicting that things would stay pretty much the same."